Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Classes are Honorable

Egalitarians don't like to acknowledge the reality of classes because they think that their middle class life is the good kind of life. They believe that noting the existence and different cultures of other social classes is necessarily to make invidious distinctions.

However, if we believe in the nobility of labor and of useful leisure we can talk about classes without assuming them to be moral hierarchies.

Let me point to two of my favorite class analysts in response: P.N. Furbank notes that every class taxonomy is invidious, tending to show the taxonomist's class in the best light. And Paul Fussell says that there is an "out of sight" class at the top and bottom of the social structure.